Clack, clack, clack; bang, bang, bang

FORT HOOD — In one of the most riveting accounts to date, an officer in charge at the site of last year’s shooting massacre recalled details of trying to treat the wounded even as the gunman kept firing outside.

Sgt. 1st Class Maria Guerra, the noncommissioned officer in charge of medical processing at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, said she shouted at nurses and medics to begin triage work on the wounded inside while trying to barricade the doors to keep the shooter from coming back in.

“And I’m thinking to myself, ‘He is not getting back into this building’ ” Guerra said while giving testimony via satellite from Michigan this afternoon.

Guerra described how she used a belt to close off a set of double doors, and then wedged a chair against another door to keep the assailant out.

“Just keep triaging,” she told the medical staff.

At some point, Guerra began using a marker to identify which of the wounded were not going to make it, so the medical staff could focus on other wounded. She wrote “D 1325″ on the foreheads of two soldiers who she’d determined had died about 1:25 p.m.

“If they’re dead, you’ve got to move on,” she told the staff.

Witnesses who testified today provided chilling details of the bloodbath that followed the shooting and the chaotic efforts to save lives even as the gunman was still firing outside. Some nurses slipped on the floor, which was covered with blood and spent shell casings, and tried to see through thick smoke that made it seem dark inside.

Earlier in the day, two civilian nurses gave gripping accounts of the Nov. 5 shooting that left 13 people dead and dozens injured in the deadliest incident on a U.S. base in modern times.

Theodore Coukoulis, a nurse who cowered with others in a rear corner of the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, said he could hear the gunman coming closer, moving casually as if “walking through a mall.” Spent shell casings had wedged in the tread of the shooter’s boots, creating a clicking noise with each step on the hard floor.

“You could hear the clack, clack, clack at the same time you could hear the bang, bang, bang of the guns,” Coukoulis said.

Coukoulis, an Army retiree, said the gunman confronted three soldiers who all stood without fear just before he shot each of them to death. Two were next to Coukoulis, and another was by a nearby refrigerator.

“They didn’t wince and they didn’t (whimper). They were looking at death and they knew it,” Coukoulis testified.

Then the shooter looked at the civilian nurses in the area and left, he said. Coukoulis stood at the witness stand and pointed to the defendant, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, to identify Hasan as the gunman. He did not name the three soldiers who were killed.

Kimberly Huseman, a registered nurse in the center that day, dabbed tears from her face as a tape of her eight-minute 911 call was played in the courtroom. During the call, she shouted “Oh my God” repeatedly, and relayed whatever information she could about the gunman.

“He’s a soldier,” she said. “I don’t know who he is.”

“Is an ambulance coming? We need help right now,” Huseman told the dispatcher, while at the same time worrying whether the gunman would return.

“The shooter’s down,” she later said, her pitch rising with anguish when faced with the aftermath — “mass cal” she said, using the military parlance for an incident with 10 or more casualties.

One of the arduous tasks facing the investigating officer, Col. James Pohl, is weighing the merits of each of the 45 charges against Hasan, who faces 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. After the Article 32 hearing is over, Pohl will advise Fort Hood commanders whether he believes they should pursue a court martial on all the charges or lessen or dismiss some of them.

Staff Sgt. Michael Davis testified this morning that the bullet in his back from the shooting is still there, because doctors fear its removal might cause irreparable harm to his spine. He said he believes the round might have passed though a partition or glanced off a piece of furniture before it hit him.

One of the issues in the case is whether deadly intent played a role in Davis’ injury, since the gunman apparently did not have a direct line of sight to him when the round was fired.

While testimony in the second week of the hearing has often been repetitive, there have been a few descriptive recollections from witnesses that captured the drama of the shooting last Nov. 5.

Pvt. Justin Johnson still has a bullet in his chest, since doctors said it would damage his lung to try to remove it. But while speaking live via teleconference from Afghanistan on Monday, he said he feared for his life during the roughly 10-minute shooting.

“I thought to myself I was going to die here” at Ford Hood, Johnson said.

Spc. Dayna Roscoe, another of the 10 soldiers wounded in the shooting who testified Monday, vividly described a woman bleeding badly from her stomach.

“She wanted someone to tell her family that she loved them, because she didn’t think she was going to make it,” Roscoe said, without identifying the person.

Other witnesses gave chilling details of the gunman’s demeanor as he fired at least one gun, a black semiautomatic weapon, in rapid succession, pausing only briefly to reload.

“He was hitting people who were still trying to crawl away,” Johnson said.

Spc. Joseph Foster described how the shooter yelled “Allahu akbar” before drawing a weapon from his right cargo pocket.

“It was a strong, stern voice, like a drill instructor,” he said.

“That’s the only thing I ever heard him say,” Foster later added on cross-examination by the defense.

Sgt. 1st Class Miguel Valdivia said the gunman had a blank expression, “almost as if he was not there.”

“He wasn’t happy, he wasn’t angry. It was just a passive look,” Valdivia said.

Witnesses have said the assailant shifted his movements frequently, walking left and then right, firing at whoever was in sight. After he went outside, some used chairs to barricade the doors.